New Bill Would Require NYPD to Live within City Limits, for the Sake of Tolerance

Recently the Times published a somewhat shocking, not at all surprising article about a Facebook group, “No More West Indian Day Detail,” where New York City police officers gathered together to complain about the “animals” they serve and protect on that day of revelry. (Animals like, say, the blameless dreadlocked City Council member they arrested and roughed up during the parade?)

It’s in response to all this further evidence of a law-enforcement class frequently separate from the populace on which it imposes its order, that Prospect Heights-based Assemblyman (and likely congressional candidate) Hakeem Jeffries has, per NY1, introduced a bill require that would require NYC cops to live primarily within the five boroughs, since “those who have no real understanding of the individuals they are policing, the individuals they are serving, will be inclined to disrespect us or far worse.”

New York City cops are currently permitted to live in Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, Nassau and Suffolk counties. (There are loopholes, too: in the 70s, when every cop wanted out of the city, some guys at the 3-7 started pulling overtime at subway stations and got the city to declare them auxiliary transit cops—the only cops allowed to live outside NY were transit cops, because the transit authority was also run by Jersey and Connecticut. They bought some land in Jersey, got cheap loans from people they knew. They made themselves a place where the shit couldn’t touch them.)

Getting way ahead of ourselves, if this bill were to pass, it would also be interesting to track its influence on the city’s public school system, as a politically empowered bloc of blue-collar, working-class parents started to enroll their kids here.

3 Comment

What nonsense, does anybody do research. There is no 37 precinct. NYC cops have never been able to live in New Jersey. This is the intro to Copland, a bad cop movie that is totally fictious. The Nyc transit system does not go into N.J. or Connecticut. MTA railroad- yes, but they have always had a separate police force and only serve New York and some of Connecticut. This crap was repeated on Huffington Post -New York. People believe anything that is on the internet.